Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to structures that are intended to protect a person from injury and, more particularly, to a belt apparatus that is structured to resist the breakage of bones as a result of a falling event.
Related Art
A person's bones are understood to gradually become more brittle and thus more subject to breakage as the person ages. It is also understood that a person's muscular tone and strength likewise decreases with age. The loss of muscular tone and strength can, along with other factors, can have a tendency to reduce balance and coordination in an older person, which can contribute to the potential that the person might experience a falling event, i.e., an event wherein the person falls onto a floor, against a wall, or against another object. The reduced muscular tone and strength also reduces the person's ability to catch himself or herself or to otherwise protect himself or herself during a falling event. Furthermore, the aforementioned brittleness of the bones in an aged person increases the likelihood that one or more bones might be broken as a result of a falling event.
It can therefore be said that, as a general matter, aged persons are relatively more likely to experience falling events, and such falling events are likely to involve a relatively greater impact because of the person's inability to catch himself or herself, with the result that an aged person is generally at a greater risk of the breakage of bones than a younger person. It is also generally understood that a significant skeletal break can be sufficiently detrimental to a health of an aged person that the aged person may die as a direct result of the breakage. At the very least, a significant bone breakage in an older person is detrimental to the person's health due to factors such as the increased potential for infection and the physical resources required to heal the bone break, and also due to the pain and suffering experienced by the person, as well as other factors.
It thus would be desirable to provide a solution that can help people, particularly aged people, to avoid bone breakages that would otherwise be significantly detrimental to the person's health.